Building a PlayStation app

Designing apps for TV screens

A new type of input

When in 2016 Magineand Sony decided to work together, we got the chance to create an app for the PlayStation 3 and 4. The tight schedule of the project left us with around one and a half month to prove that we can transform our TV app experience into a console app. Our greatest challenge was to learn how to use the controller as a new type of input.

Understand, observe and define

By linking the business goals with an analysis of our TV app data, we were able to determine the structure and direction that the app needed. It was essential for us to focus on the viewing experience and to surround it with the most critical functions. In this way, it should be ensured that the most crucial actions for the users are only one click away and that you can get back to the player with a maximum of three clicks. This is to create a lean-back experience.

Ideate and prototype

Intending to create a “lean-back” experience, we assumed that our structure for the app must give the impression that features are an extension of the player rather than an additional screen. We divided the individual actions into groups based on the context, which made navigation more comfortable. This should enable the user to better understand the change in context and to be able to return to the stream more easily. To test our user assumptions with real users, we created a JavaScript and HTML-based prototype that mimicked the experience on TV using the PlayStation controller as input.

Hypothesize and learn

After we finished the prototype, it was time to complete the user test questionnaire, SUS score, and viewing habits. We tested 9 participants over two days by giving them a fictional scenario with specific tasks, a SUS score survey and a survey of your viewing behaviour. The test results were beneficial as they gave us certainty for some design decisions but also showed us minor new problems. Achieving a SUS score of 84.2 surprised us the most, in a positive sense, because it means that we had achieved our goal of a “lean-back” experience.

Participants

Days of testing

0 %

Task completion rate

Points at the SUS score

My role and learnings

My responsibility for conception, design and testing in the initial creation phase made it easier to take on responsibility for product management in later stages. Developing an app for a restrictive environment made development very difficult and forced us to change the design here and there. However, the tests have shown that we are basically going in the right direction and that we should always get our users’ feedback when we build something for them. In the end, the concept and structure of the PlayStation app became the basis for improvements for the other apps for TV.